Close excess bases overseas first

Updated 4:37 pm, Monday, April 29, 2013

The Pentagon, in its budget request submitted this month, asked Congress to authorize another base realignment and closure round in 2015.

There is an old saying, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.” That saying particularly resonates as we contemplate another painful round of BRAC.

For now, Congress should deny this request. Until the Pentagon does a serious analysis of all our current overseas installations to include the costs, deployment capability and training capacity, and actually closes redundant bases overseas and brings some missions home, it would be premature to authorize another round of BRAC that might close bases still needed here. And we can't possibly know what is needed here until we first close excess installations overseas.

Most Popular

In 2002, I added an amendment to the fiscal year 2003 Defense Appropriations Bill that passed unanimously, creating an Overseas Base Commission to take a closer look at our overseas bases. I thought that it was imperative to get a better understanding of our overseas basing strategy and what might be excess before the 2005 BRAC. At the same time, the Pentagon concluded its own analysis and published the Integrated Global Presence and Stationing Plan that did indeed call for significant reductions in our Cold War presence in Europe, as well as reassigning location in our forces in Korea. As a result, 2005 BRAC commissioners provided much better informed recommendations for base closure because they had a more complete picture of our future basing requirements.

In the next five years, the Army and Marine Corps will cut as many as 100,000 personnel. There also will be significant reductions in the number of personnel, aircraft and ships in the Navy and Air Force. There will be excess infrastructure in the future, and reduction will be necessary, but where is it best to make those reductions?

Overseas commanders are sometimes loath to close even the most insignificant and redundant installation in their area of operations. They don't willingly give up anything under their command, and when there is open space, they also tend to find a reason to fill it. There simply isn't enough Pentagon or congressional oversight of this costly practice.

As the longtime chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee responsible for funding military construction, it was a constant battle for our subcommittee to keep wasteful overseas military construction spending in check. I often observed requests for new military construction at an overseas installation that was already slated for closure. There were also numerous examples where the Pentagon had made the decision to close an overseas installation, only to report later to the committee that commanders or their successors had found a reason to reoccupy the installation and now needed literally millions of dollars to bring the neglected installation up to standard with new construction and renovation.

The fact is, there are literally dozens of installations overseas that could be closed at great savings. When asked privately, most senior military officers can readily tick off a long list of installations overseas that no longer serve a useful purpose. By identifying that excess overseas, we can redirect scarce funds to increase the military value of the installations that truly are enduring and necessary both overseas and in the United States.

At some point, Congress should authorize another round of BRAC — but not this year. We must not close a single installation at home until there is an independent analysis of every single overseas military installation against a defined set of criteria incorporating elements of the cost of base realignment actions, or COBRA, model used in the BRAC process. Every aspect of an overseas installation's military and strategic value to the United States should be examined, and the process should be as transparent and objective as the BRAC process is today for domestic bases. And just like the BRAC, the final recommendations after this exhaustive and transparent process would have to be considered in its entirety and voted up or down.

Only when the Pentagon has slated installations overseas for closure and determined what forces should be retained in the force structure and returned to the United States should Congress authorize another painful round of BRAC. Congress must not start down the road to another BRAC until the Pentagon tells us where that road should take us.

David W. Davis, who retired from the U.S. Army, spent 14 years as a senior staffer in the U.S. Senate and now serves as senior associate for Meyers & Associates in Washington, D.C., contributed to this column.